Monday, August 15, 2011

Monday Madness: Adolph Blank

Adolph Blank died 31 March 1900 at the age of 32. His widow married my Great-Grandfather Theodor Miottel. Theodor helped to raise Adolph and Emily's children, Margarette, Arthur, Helen and Adolph along with his own children Clara, George and his brother John W. Miottel.

Can anyone make out the cause of death? The first word appears to be facial. The death certificate states the death occurred at the Cook County Hospital for the Insane - does anyone know of any facial disease or deformity that may be related to an insanity diagnoses?

3 comments:

I've had to decipher some causes of death and what I do is to enter as many of the letters as I can into a search engine and see what comes up. In this case, I got "erysipelas" for the middle word. Is the last word "idiopathic"? Good luck!

I agree with Elizabeth on this one. I think it says " facial erysipelas, idiopathic" for the cause of death. That is a tough one! I found an interesting article about an outbreak in a mental hospital on Google. Search the domain www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for the file brmedj01435-0036.pdf to read it. Good luck!

Thank you both so much for your help. I think you are both correct. Funny how you can stare at something for a long time and can't make out a word - and then someone point's out what it says and it is so obvious! I read the article you mentioned, very interesting. Thank you again for the help!

About Me

Amy Urman is a genealogical researcher, lecturer and private investigator. This blog is used to share pictures, memories, stories, recipes and anything family or genealogy related. She is the co-founder of the Pima County Genealogy Society - and society blogger at pimacountygenealogysociety.blogspot.com.